


1860: Buck Wilmington

by Deannie



Series: Eighteen-Hundred-and-Sixty [3]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, Empath, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Supermagnificent AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-16 04:12:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7251595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’d bedded women before, but he never tried to bed her. Not Joanna. She hurt too much to fix. He just sat with her, talked with her, played cards with her when the fancy struck them both. Anything to keep her from thinking any more than she had to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1860: Buck Wilmington

**Author's Note:**

> For the hc_bingo prompt "depression"

He was twenty-five before he accepted that there was nothing he could do for her. The sadness, the horror, the damn endless driving hell of her life had never been something he could fix.

Not that he hadn’t tried. God, Buck Wilmington was nothing if not a helper, or so his mama said, and he’d done everything he could for sweet Joanna from the day he’d met her.

Joanna was fifteen and Buck only a year older when she’d shown up in town for the first time. Frail and wasted and strung out by the trial of just getting there, she’d been met at the stagecoach by one of the other ladies in the house and taken in. She was Miss Hallie’s niece, and her mama had gone out of the business years ago. Married “respectable.” 

Not that Joanna’s stepfather had been respectable at all, of course. Buck had absorbed the pain and anguish and soul-deep  _ broken _ that was Joanna’s mind and wished the man was still alive. Buck had survived being a whorehouse bastard in a town full of sometimes hateful children, and he could beat a boy bloody if he had to. 

He’d’ve beaten Maurice Rackman bloody if Joanna hadn’t already killed him.

Not that anyone knew she had, of course, except Buck and her. He’d felt it in her the very first time she told her story. 

“Mama and him were fighting again,” she told her mama’s sister and the other women in the house. She wrapped her shawl tighter around herself, and he resisted the urge to hug her against the pain she radiated. “He went at her with the knife, and I… guess she got hold of the iron somehow. I don’t know,” she lied, her voice desperate to be believed and her heart more desperate still. “I was hiding, like I always did when he got like that.” She let the tears fall, but he felt the guilt where others saw the sorrow. “She hit him… hard. She kept hitting him, and... “ She caught her breath and he felt the memory of an iron in her hand overwhelm her. “He’d cut her too bad, though. She…”

Buck’s mama hugged her warmly and shushed her sobbing into silence. “Now, now, Joanna,” she whispered. “You’re safe here, darling. We’ll take care of you.”

And they did—or they wanted to.

Joanna didn’t take to a bed for a year. The ladies were determined not to let her. She was fragile and her mama had left the life, so she’d never want her daughter back in it. But slowly, like a slide into a melting creek, she started in. And she was good. Better than a girl like her should have been.

Well, that’s what they all thought, anyway, but Buck knew better. There was a flush of shame and horror when she mentioned her stepfather that made Buck’s fists curl. Buck knew Rackman wasn’t the first parent to take his child to his bed, stepfather or no, but it was clear he’d done his worst to poor Joanna. 

Buck had to leave the building when Joanna had a suitor. He got to where he couldn’t stand the feel of her shame against the passion and lust of the man above her. Didn’t matter how tender the client was, Joanna lived every night as her stepfather’s whipping child. She couldn’t see past it, but she couldn’t see any other way to be, either.

And so Buck would sneak into her room once her nightly torture was done, once she was alone with her thoughts. He’d bedded women before, but he never tried to bed her. Not Joanna. She hurt too much to fix. He just sat with her, talked with her, played cards with her when the fancy struck them both. Anything to keep her from thinking any more than she had to.

Buck’s mama died when he was eighteen, and it took him a while to track down the man who killed her. After that, he had no stomach for returning home, afraid to see the women and have them know what he’d done. Instead, he travelled the state, worked where he could, flirted with the idea of the army, and wished he had had a chance to get real book learning done as he visited saloons and restaurants in Dallas where erudite men expounded on theories he almost understood. 

And no matter where he went, he asked after Joanna when he wrote her aunt Hallie, who never lost touch with him. The answer was always the same:  _ Poor Joanna is as blue as always, my boy. Seems there’s no way to cheer the child. She’s just been through too much. _

Way too much, he thought sadly, looking at the new tombstone in the beggar’s field—the only place the women of the house were allowed to rest eternal in this town. In the last letter from Hallie, the answer had been different, both worse and better. He didn’t reply by mail, just took off for the town he hadn’t set foot in since he killed the man who’d killed his mother. 

They were the same, he and she, though she’d killed Rackman as he was doing the deed and he had hunted his man down and killed him a whole lot slower than she had. It hadn’t been pretty, and Buck had been too much of a coward to come back and face her, knowing how much more she’d been through. He wondered if it might have made a difference to her. Maybe she wouldn’t have not done what she did at the end, if he’d just shown her that she wasn’t the only one to seek that kind of justice. That it weren’t the sin and horror she thought it was.

Or that it  _ was _ , but if he could survive it, so could she. 

But the tombstone was kind of inescapable; clean and simple and as much as Hallie and the girls could afford: 

_ Joanna Leary _ _  
_ _ Flights of Angels Sing You to Your Rest _

He prayed they would. God knew she’d never gotten rest in this life.

Buck walked silently to his horse and rode out of town, past the whorehouse where he grew up, without ever looking back.

********  
the end


End file.
